pew pew

Charming Proof Laura Dern Kept Saying “Pew” While Shooting Her Last Jedi Blaster

This wonderful nugget of trivia has just been confirmed via director Rian Johnson’s commentary on the film.
laura dern
Laura Dern in The Last Jedi.By David James/ © Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/ © Lucasfilm Ltd/Everett Collection.

Laura Dern wasn’t lying when she revealed last summer that she simply couldn’t stop saying “pew” every time she fired her laser gun in The Last Jedi. That’s right: the powerful and wise Vice Admiral Holdo was reduced to a gleeful, childlike state whenever she actually participated in a star war.

Now that some Star Wars: The Last Jedi bonus features have slipped into our galaxy, that detail and a slew of others are quickly being revealed. In his commentary track for the film, helmer Rian Johnson confirms this particular bit of Dern trivia: “You can see Laura Dern say ‘pew’ when she fires the gun, which she could never not do every time she shot it,” he reportedly says. Eagle-eyed fans have also already found a prime example of one of those “pew” moments.

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Dern first revealed this adorable tidbit about herself back in August, telling Stephen Colbert that at first, she didn’t even realize she was doing it.

“I was back in my bedroom at eight years old,” she said, describing the experience of shooting the film. “Doing the scene, I went, ‘Pew-pew!’ They’ve taken the sound out, I don’t think you’ll hear that in the movie. I was so excited! I mean, it’s Star Wars!”

Dern wasn’t the only actor in the Star Wars universe to embrace their inner child while wielding a space weapon. During a Star Wars anniversary panel last year, Hayden Christensen revealed that when he used a lightsaber as Anakin Skywalker, he made his own lightsaber sounds—so much so that director George Lucas had to tell him to stop between takes.

“‘Hayden, that looks really great,’” he recalled Lucas saying, “‘but I can see your mouth moving. You don’t have to do that. We add the sound effects in afterward.’ I was just so focused I wasn’t even aware I was doing it.”

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Ewan McGregor has also confessed that while filming the prequels, he couldn’t resist making lightsaber sounds either. “It was quite difficult not to make the sound,” he said in a Graham Norton interview. Can you blame him? Can you?

The pew-pew of it all isn’t the only tidbit to arise from The Last Jedi’s digital release, thankfully. On Tuesday, Johnson revealed that his favorite feature is an until-now secret, silent version of the film set entirely to John Williams’s score.

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Which means that now, we get to see every Vice Admiral Holdo and Poe Dameron scene without all the mansplaining. Rejoice! Pew-pew!